No April fool here

Good morning. Happy 1st April or April Fool's day. There is never any chance of fooling me as it is my birthday today. Yes seriously. My Hb has the day off and we are heading out to enjoy a birthday lunch and potter and perhaps a meal out tonight as well. 

It is also time for our newest challenge over at Country View. For April we have a nice easy theme of Spring/Easter. We look forward to seeing lots of lovely spring inspired creations.

You can enter our April challenge as many times as you like and combine with other challenges. There is also a £20 crafting voucher up for grabs to the lucky randomly selected winner to spend over on the Country View Crafts on line store. Remember that UK postage and packing is absolutely FREE! All the details for the challenge can be found here.

For my design team projects for April I decided to make my Easter tags which I make every year for my big and little babies.

Today I will share the first tag, the second will be coming up on 13th April. 

This is what I got up to.
 I make tags for my big and small children for their Easter bags and this one is for Jack who will be 2 on Easter Day. He adores birds and so I knew I had to made a bird based tag for him. The birds around here are certainly paring up. I spotted these 2 sweethearts down at the ponds.

First I made a tree lined setting.
I added twisted citron and squeezed lemonade oxides to make my tag base.
I got out my small tag sized Tim Holtz stencils.

 I took his tree stencil and added vintage photo oxide

I also added some blue leaves with broken china distress ink using his leaf stencil.

I added some bird remnant rubs

I also altered a die cut from my favourite Tim Bird branch Bigz die, sadly long discontinued using paints and a little crackle. 

I finished off with some butterflies from his butterfly frenzy die.

Here is my finished tag.

with some close ups

and one final shot

I hope to see lots of you joining in the fun..the details again are here.

I would like to enter my tag into the following challenges;

Pixie's snippets playground #349

Simon says stamp Wednesday anything goes

Alphabet challenge A is for animals

Crafty Catz 1/3 anything goes

Uniko 1/3 Spring/Easter

Polkadoodles anything creative/mixed media

Crafty friends 3/3 spring

My 2nd tag for CVC will be on 13th April.

This is the link again for our April challenge. 

 

I have second post coming up in an hour as being Monday it is also time for my
Visible Image DT Monday make...busy busy!

       Back very soon!

Bye for now,

Jane x

More halloween tag inspiration

Good morning, it's my time for my Monday make for Visible Image and we are halfway through the month and our October challenge theme of autumnal colours. Remember you could win a £40 coupon if you join us. Details are at the end of this post.

There is so much autumnal inspiration around us. I took these lovely photos on Thursday at Chartwell. Just look at the colours of the leaves.

and the leaves are starting to fall too.

I have another of my Halloween tags to share today, this time using the brilliant Glimmer of light stamp set.

 I stamped and coloured the moths and fussy cut them out

I stamped one set of large wings onto acetate and used these to glitter up (you can see this in my final design)

 I blended some distress inks onto my tag adding some water flicks

 Then I used the
dark hearts  stencil

to add some more black ink.

The sentiment was stamped in gold ink.

I stamped the smallest moths onto the tag and then layered over some die cut spider webs.

I added glossy accents to the light bulb and the medium moths.

Then I put my design together.

Here is my finished tag.

with some close ups

and one final shot

I would like to enter my tag into the following challenges;

That's Crafty 2/3 spookiliscious
Craft stamper take it make it 1/3 anything goes
Pixie's snippets playground #337
The Artistic stamper 2/3 inktober
Stamping sensations 1/3 shades of autumn
Penny black and more 1/3 autumn splendour
Creative Inspirations 1/3 autumn glow
Sweet stampin 1/3 Halloween
Not just cards anything goes
Simon says stamp Wednesday anything but a card

All the Visible Image links are here;

Visible Image group page on Facebook. Our friendly Group is here ...it would be lovely to see you. There is a monthly challenge for you to share your creations made with Visible Image stamps. One randomly chosen winner each month wins a £40 coupon to spend on the website. The theme for October is "colours of autumn".

The main Visible Image Facebook page is here; where you can find all the latest information and news including giveaways...open world wide.

And the shop web site is here; where all their gorgeous stamps and stencils can be found. There is a 50% off sentiments sale at the moment and also a fab deal for Zodiac stamp sets, but be quick, it won't last long. 

Thanks for stopping by today and enjoy the wonderful autumn colours surrounding us at the moment.

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x

Hammer horror for Halloween

Good morning it's my Monday make for Visible Image and we are already a week into October which is still sharing its glorious colours everywhere.

The evenings are getting darker earlier and soon the clocks will be turned back an hour. The light at this time of the year though down at the ponds is magical as it bounces off the water. I took the photo below late in the afternoon

Today I am using the new "You are not alone" set

together with Mr Bone Jangles

the moon from the believe in unicorns

the fab text stamp from scripted streets

and the skull stencil

As soon as I saw the new "You are not alone" set I had two initial design ideas.The first I had was for the sky inspiration card I created here . The 2nd was to get the hands to hold Mr Bone Jangles skull! Yes I know that my imagination works in very strange ways. 

At the end of the month it's Halloween, when things go bump in the night and ghouls and witches fly...mwwhhha haa haaaa so I thought it a good time to put my second idea together. 

I always create tags for my big and small kids goodie bags so today's make is one of them.

I started with a kraft tag to work on.

I stamped the moon in white ink and added some splatters of distress ink to make an autumnal coloured primary layer. I also stamped some of the clouds (you can see this further down)

I gradually built up the background, 

by stencilling on the skull

and then stamped on Mr Bone Jangles. I also red embossed one of  the star bursts from

Rays of light and added some text from scripted streets in red ink.

I added some white pen and red embossed the edges.

This became the base of my tag.

Next it was time for some Hammer Horror!  (I'm showing my age now). I was also really fascinated by the anatomy dissection lectures I attended as a student at King's College during my physiotherapy training and I still love anatomy now.  A few years back my daughter and I really enjoyed the Body Worlds show which came to this country and I drew on all these memories for my inspiration.

I red and black embossed the hands

I amputated  trimmed off the tip of the back finger 😉 so that the hand could hold the skull.

I then added a little more shading using distress inks.

I also have a fab skeleton hand in my charms collection and a saw brad so I bloodied them up!

It was then time to put my tag together.
Here is it.....

with some close ups

and one last shot

I really had some great Hammer Horror fun making this and plan some more Halloween tags in this vein (pardon the pun!)

I would like to enter my tag into the following challenges;

That's Crafty 1/3 spookiliscious
Addicted to stamps and More 2/3 make your mark
The Artistic stamper 2/3 inktober
Simon says stamp Monday tag it

All the Visible Image links are here;

Visible Image group page on Facebook. Our friendly Group is here ...it would be lovely to see you. There is a monthly challenge for you to share your creations made with Visible Image stamps. One randomly chosen winner each month wins a £40 coupon to spend on the website. The theme for October is "autumn colours".

The main Visible Image Facebook page is here; where you can find all the latest information and news including giveaways...open world wide.

And the shop web site is here; where all their gorgeous stamps and stencils can be found. There is a 50% off sentiments sale at the moment, but be quick, it won't last long. 

Thanks so much for indulging me in my Halloween fun. I hope you might be inspired to try something similar with these fab stamps? They are so versatile for so many very different themes.

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x

Ovo by Cirque du Soleil

2 weeks ago my Hb and I attended a performance of OVO by Cirque du Soleil. OMGoodness me it was truly amazing. We have always wanted to see them perform but for various reasons have never got our act together to get tickets.

Even just visiting the Royal Albert Hall is delightful, it was my first ever visit.
The Albert Memorial opposite the hall has recently been restored and even on a very wet January day shone out like a beacon. Victoria must have loved her Albert very much...and she obviously had a lot of money to spare in those days! I am sure that she would be delighted to see the hall and area still visited by many people from all around the globe.

 The carvings around the memorial are incredibly detailed.

The Hall is also undergoing some renovation work and when finished will be stunning

Inside has already been renovated and is full of red carpet and lush furnishings and of course pictures and statues of Queen Victoria

 and Prince Albert

 We had seats in a box in the Grand Tier

and when we stepped through to our seats this was our view

the ceiling had eggs suspended too

To sum up the "story" it is all about an egg, a ladybird (bug to my USA friends) and a fly. It's very funny and the athleticism of the performers just blew us away. I thought I would share a few photos as incredibly they are quite happy for you to take them as long as there is no flash.

Some are a little blurry due to the lack of light but I actually think it adds to the atmosphere.

 I decided to make myself a tag as a "Moment" for Jane's Journal.

 I was lucky enough to be the Christmas winner over at Rubber Dance stamps and had just received lots of goodies. I chose these 3 stamps which I though were perfect...an egg, some delicate flowers from the bird set and the fab butterfly girl,

I used all the colours from the performance on the base by blending my distress inks and also added some stencilling. The delicate foliage was then stamped with archival inks. 

I fussy cut out the butterfly girl and added a wink of stella sparkle to her wings. She reminds me of the performers and I stood her on the egg, which I also fussy cut out.  I die cut some hearts to hold the egg with lots of love and added some very appropriate chit chat words.

Here are a couple of close ups

And one last one to try to show the sparkle on her wings.

I would like to enter my tag into the following challenges

Rubber dance colour theme/use hearts I went with the hearts.
Rubber dance forever challenge I used all Rubber Dance stamps on my tag
Penny Black and more Love hearts and flowers
Pile it on 3D embellishments my corrugated card hearts
Artistic Inspirations 1/3 anything goes
Simon says stamp Monday love is in the air
Deep Ocean love is all around
Simon says stamp Wednesday It must be love
Frilly and Funkie 1/3 all you need is love
Craft Stamper take it make it 2/3 February

It really was a most memorable show and really cheered up the most wet, chilly January Saturday.
 If you get a chance to see it you will not be disappointed. It is an absolute treat.

Before I go a quick heads up that Visible Image Stamps are back on your TV screens this weekend (10/11 Feb). The shows are on Create and Craft TV (channels SKY 674, Freeview 23, Virgin 748 and others) Saturday at 4pm (UK time) and Sunday 10am (UK time) They are launching the Zodiac stamps with some fab demos by Mark and Pauline...

and I will be waving at some of my samples 😁

Thanks so much for stopping by today and for the kind comments you take the time to leave me.

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x